I said, “I did my best, bredu. But I couldn’t reach it, the barriers were too strong. Bredu, don’t look at me like that,” I pleaded, “I can’t bear it, to see you looking at me that way.”
His voice was almost inaudible. “I know. You did your best”
Had I really? I was struck with doubt I felt sick with the force of his misery. I tried to take his hands again, forcing myself to meet his pain head-on, not flinch from it But he pulled away from me, and I let it go.
“Regis, listen to me. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps in the days of the Keepers, it was a terrible tragedy for a Hastur to be without laran. But the world is changing. The Comyn is changing. YouTl find other strengths.”
I felt the futility of the words even as I spoke them. What must it be like, to live without laran? Like being without sight hearing … but, never having known it, he must not be allowed to suffer its loss.
“Regis, you have so much else to give. To your family, to the Domains, to our world. And your children will have it—” I took his hands again in mine, trying to comfort him, but he cracked.
“Zandru’s hells, stop it,” he said, and wrenched his hands roughly away again. He caught up his cloak, which lay on the stone seat, and ran out of the room.
I stood frozen in the shock of his violence, then, in horror, ran after him. Gods! Drugged, sick, desperate, he couldn’t be allowed to run off that way! He needed to be watched, cared for, comforted—but I wasn’t in time. When I reached the stairs, he had already disappeared into the labyrinthine corridors of that wing, and I lost him.
I called and hunted for hours before, reeling with fatigue since I, too, had been riding for days, I gave up finally and went back to my rooms. I couldn’t spend the whole night storming all over Comyn Castle, shouting his name! I couldn’t force my way into the Regent’s suite and demand to know if he was there! There were limits to what Kennard Alton’s bastard son could do. I suspected I’d already exceeded them. I could only hope desperately that the kirian would make him sleepy, or wear off with fatigue, and he would come back to rest or make his way to the Hastur apartments and sleep there.
I waited for hours and saw the sun rise, blood-red in the mists hanging over the Terran spaceport, before, cramped and cold, I fell asleep on the stone bench by the fireplace.
But Regis did not return.
Chapter THREE
Regis ran down the corridor, dazed and confused, the small points of color still flashing behind his eyes, racked with the interior crawling nausea. One thought was tearing at him:
Failed. I’ve failed. Even Lew, tower-trained and with all his skill, couldn’t help me. There’s nothing there. When he said what he did about potential, he was humoring me, comforting a child.
He reeled, feeling sick again, clung momentarily to the wall and ran on.
The Comyn castle was a labyrinth, and Regis had not been inside it in years. Before long, in his wild rush to get away from the scene of his humiliation, he was well and truly lost. His senses, kirian-blurred, retained vague memories of stone cul-de-sacs, blind corners, archways, endless stairs up which he toiled and down which he blundered and sometimes fell, courtyards filled with rushing wind and blinding rain, hour after hour. To the end of his life he retained an impression of the Comyn Castle which he could summon at will to overlay his real memories of it: a vast stone maze, a trap through which he wandered alone for centuries, with no human form to be seen. Once, around a corner, he heard Lew calling his name. He flattened himself in a niche and hid for a few thousand years until, long after, the sound was gone.
After an indeterminate time of wandering and stumbling and hallucinating, he became aware that it had been a long time since he had fallen down a flight of stairs; that the corridors were long, but not miles and miles long; and that they were no longer filled with uncanny crawling colors and silent sounds. When he came out at last on to a high balcony at the uppermost level, he knew where he was.